Winter Prey

within two or three miles of Weather’s house. The two on-duty deputies were told to stop sleds and take names. Nobody thought much would come of it.
    “When I got the call about the shooting, I phoned Phil Bergen,” Carr told Lucas.
    “Yeah?”
    “Nobody home,” Carr said.
    There was a moment of silence, then Lucas asked, “Does he have a shotgun?”
    “I don’t know. Anybody can get a gun, though.”
    “Why don’t you have somebody check on the sled, see if it’s at his house? See if he’s out on it.”
    “That’s being done,” Carr said.
    The Madison crime scene techs were taking pictures of the snowmobile tread tracks, the snowshoe tracks, and were digging shotgun shells out of the snow. Lucas, still shaking with cold, walked through the living room with Weather. A double-ought pellet had hit the frame on one of the photographs of her parents, but the photo was all right.
    “Why did he do it that way, why . . . ?”
    “I have to think about that,” Lucas said.
    “About . . . ?”
    “He wanted you by those windows. If he’d gone to a door, you might not have let him in. And he’d need a hell of a gun to shoot through those oak doors and be sure about getting you. So the question is, did he know about the doors?”
    “I think the glass was just the way he wanted to do it,” Weather said after a minute. “He could get access up from the lake, nobody’d see him.”
    “That’s possible, too. If you hadn’t seen him, if we didn’t know about the phones, you might’ve walked right up to the glass.”
    “I almost did anyway,” she said.
    Carr came back. “We can’t find Phil, but his sled’s in the garage. His car is gone.”
    “I don’t know what that means,” Lucas said.
    “I don’t either—but I’ve got dispatch calling Park Falls at Hayward. They’re checking the bars for his car.”

    The man from Hardware Hank brought three sheets of plywood and a Skil saw, broke the glass fragments out of the glass doors and the window in Weather’s bedroom, fitted the openings with plywood, and set them in place with nails. “That’ll hold you for tonight,” he said as he left. “I’ll check back tomorrow on something permanent.”
    By three o’clock that morning the crime scene techs were packing up and the phone company had come and gone. Bergen had still not been found.
    “I’m going home,” Carr said. “I’ll leave somebody.”
    “No, we’re okay,” Weather said. “Lucas has his .45 and I have the rifle . . . and I seriously doubt that’d he’d be back again.”
    “All right,” Carr said. He flushed slightly. Lucas realized that he assumed that he and Weather were in bed together. “Stay on the handset.”
    “Yeah,” Lucas said. Then, glancing at Weather, said to Carr, “C’mere and talk a minute. Privately.”
    “What?” Weather asked, hands on her hips.
    “Law enforcement talk,” Lucas said.
    Carr followed him into the guest bedroom. Lucas picked up his shoulder holster, took the pistol out. He’d reloaded after he got out of the shower, and now hepunched out the chambered round and reseated it in the magazine.
    “If we don’t find Bergen tonight, he could get lynched tomorrow,” he said.
    “I know that,” Carr said. “I’m praying he’s drunk somewhere. First time for that.”
    “But the main thing I want to say is, we need to get Weather out of town. She’s gonna fight it, but I’ve contaminated her. I can’t quite think why, but I guess I have.”
    “So work on her,” Carr said.
    Lucas gestured to his bag on the floor, the rumpled bedclothes. “We’re not quite as friendly as you think, Shelly.”
    Carr flushed again, then said, “I’ll talk to her tomorrow, we’ll work something out. I’ll have a guy with her all day.”
    “Good.”
    When the last man left, Weather pushed the door shut, looked at Lucas.
    “What was that little bull session about?” she asked suspiciously.
    “I asked some routine questions and let Shelly get a good look at my clothes and my watch and the rumpled-up bed in the guest room,” Lucas said. He shivered.
    She looked at him for a moment, then said, “Huh. I appreciate that. I guess. Are you still cold?”
    “Yeah. Freezing. But I’m okay.”
    “That was the stupidest goddamn thing I ever saw, you tearing through the snow like that in your bare feet. I honest to God thought you were in trouble when I got you back in here, I thought you were gonna have a heart attack.”
    “Seemed